Kitzhaber’s blunders don’t preclude reelection

First there was the grand “Cool Schools” initiative then-gubernatorial candidate John Kitzhaber touted as his jobs program to help us out of the recession by putting people to work installing energy efficiency in schools.

But after the election, legislators realized such a program already existed under the Public Purpose Charge paid by customers of private utilities such as PGE and Northwest Natural. Since 2001, the first 10 percent of revenues collected has gone to energy efficiency in schools.

Oops. When reality set in, Kitzhaber had to settle for a minor incremental change to an existing program he forgot to mention in his campaign.

Then there’s Rudy Crew. Kitzhaber pushed through an education governance change that made him superintendent of schools and chairman of a new Oregon Education Investment Board that hired a chief education officer to actually run things.

Crew was a high-profile first hire who neglected his real duties by traveling on state money to enhance his visibility while apparently looking for another job. Kitzhaber said he took action once he figured out what was happening. But when you’re chairman of the board, and you appoint the board, and it was your baby in the first place, it’s hard to escape responsibility.

Now we have Cover Oregon, the failed online health exchange. First Data, the company hired by the governor to conduct an independent review, found serious flaws in management and structure. Authority was fragmented, with no real comprehensive enterprise approach to management, and warnings from the quality assurance contractor were downplayed as normal.

There’s evidence Cover Oregon management kept the governor’s office out of the loop until delivering the last-minute bad news that it couldn’t deliver the website. Still, one would think if health care is your signature issue, and with political stakes so high, someone in the governor’s office would ask, “What’s the worst that could happen?” and start paying enough attention to make sure it didn’t.

The luster is gone. Kitzhaber may be good at vision and getting a divided legislature to buy into his big ideas, but the big ideas have turned into big blunders. Implementation isn’t turning out to be his strong suit.

And if his next big idea, tax reform, appears to be leading us to another sales tax proposal, voters might be susceptible to appeals that the governorship shouldn’t be a lifetime position as Kitzhaber seeks his fourth term.

Nationwide, Republicans have pinned their hopes on an anti-Obamacare frenzy fed by their conservative network spin and a pile of secret donor money. The Cover Oregon collapse fits right in.

Kitzhaber’s likely opponent, state Rep. Dennis Richardson, R-Central Point, can legitimately say he saw it coming. At least he read the quality assurance reports and, according to the audit, warned the governor in September 2012 that they sounded the alarm for a pending IT debacle.

Kitzhaber’s going into the election scarred; but in the end, elections are about choices. Voters may not like what’s happened under his watch but their choice is whether or not the alternative is better.

It isn’t clear Richardson, or the GOP in general, has any operable vision for affordable health care, or even any compassion for it. And voters might wonder if the man who boasted if he’d been a teacher allowed to carry a gun at Sandy Hook Elementary School he’d have killed the gunman should be the one overseeing our schools.

The health care exchange and education board stories are only in their early chapters. For his part, Kitzhaber has cleaned house at Cover Oregon, started a fix-it process to which he’s paying more attention, and offered a “my watch, my responsibility” mea culpa. At the Education Investment Board, his choice for Crew’s replacement seems to have righted the ship. Plus he’ll have other issues and successes on his record to point out.

Kitzhaber can’t avoid accountability for the fiascoes that plagued the early run-out of Cover Oregon and the new school-governing structure. But when it comes to winning an election, all he’ll have to do is convince voters he’s still better than the other guy.

Ron Eachus of Salem is a former legislator and a former chairman of the Oregon Public Utility Commission. His column appears on Tuesdays. Send email to re4869@comcast .net.